I began sorting through the day’s mail, which I’d gotten from the mailbox. “Oregon, Illinois—”
“Peggy! Don’t look at my mail, please. It’s private.”
“I’m not reading it. I’m only looking at the envelopes.”
“Well, stop,” he said. But I had my hand on a postcard. I didn’t read the body of it, and I didn’t have time to look at the postmark, but it was clearly signed, your father, C. Sweatt.
I stacked the pile neatly, shuffled Mr. Sweatt to the center of the deck. “I’ve stopped,” I said, but I stared at the top envelope, the one with the Oregon postmark.
“They all from strangers?” I asked at last.
“Mostly,” he said. “Here, give them to me.” He set them down on the corner of the desk and turned back to what he was writing.
“Aren’t you going to read them?” I wanted to be there when James finally got word of his father; I wanted to know what Mr. Sweatt had to say for himself.
“Eventually.”
I sat down. I stared at his back. He finished his letter, folded it, put it in an envelope. Then he began another.
“James,” I said.
“What?”
“Why don’t you look at your mail.”
“I will.”
“James.”
“Peggy,” he said, exasperated.
“There’s a card from your father.”
So he picked up the stack, not looking at me, and flipped through. I tried to see whether he lingered at the postcard, but his back was turned to me and I couldn’t tell.
“Yes,” he said finally. “You’re right.”
“What does he say?”
James sighed. “The usual.” He turned to me, held the postcard up to the light for a second, as if it were instead a sealed letter he was not supposed to read. Then he opened a desk drawer and dropped it in. “I’ll put it with the rest.”
“The rest?” I said.
He turned to me. “He’s been writing me awhile now. Don’t tell Aunt Caroline. They’re not speaking.”
I waited for some explanation.
“Where is your father?”
“Different places.”
Now I sighed. I said aloud, to myself, “Take a hint, Peggy.”
James smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Then it’s unanimous. Please. Por favor.”
For a favor, yes, I did take a hint, I didn’t ask. The most I was allowed—we agreed on this without discussion—was to inquire whether Mr. Sweatt had recently written. The answer was usually no. And though of course I would have loved to have read those misguided missives, I also understood: James needed whatever little personal life he could get, and his correspondence was pretty much it. This included whatever the hated mysterious Mr. Sweatt had to say, wherever he was, and why he did not sign that postcard love, or Dad, why he was so stingy he felt his first initial was enough for his son. This was the only information I had on him, and it fascinated me. James would not tell me anything else, and I would not ask.
One woman visited every day of her vacation. Her husband had come the first day, James told me, but after that she arrived alone. One night when I dropped over after work she was sitting there, in the chair I favored.
“Hiya,” she said to me.
She was a young woman with skinny freckled arms and bad skin. For a second I thought she was a leftover school friend. Most of the teenagers had graduated from school that May and had already moved to the first cities of their new lives. But I looked closer at the woman and saw she was older than that, in her twenties. She smiled wide; her teeth looked like a pack of cards in midshuffle.
“Hi, Peggy,” said James. “This is Patty Flood.”
“We’ve been talking all afternoon,” she said. “My husband, he’s off at the beach. He loves the ocean, but we live out in Montana and he never gets to see it. Me, I could care less. A lot of water, salty, what’s the big deal?”
I shrugged. “We like it,” I said.
“Oh, I like the ocean too,” she said quickly. “It’s beautiful. I just already know it’s there, don’t have to check on it every day. The ocean doesn’t make conversation. That’s what I like better than the beach. People.”
“You don’t have those in Montana?” I said.
“Not enough of them,” she said. “So, are you out here on vacation?”
“No,” I said. I hated being mistaken for a tourist. “I live here.”
“Lucky you,” she said. “But lucky me, too. Montana’s beautiful. The whole country’s beautiful, each part in its own way.”
Patty Flood and her good mood were starting to get on my nerves. Her mood was so good it was almost a physical thing, a monkey on a leash that she let leap all over the furniture, delighting only its owner. “But the best part of the trip,” she said, looking at James, “is meeting this young man! You are about the most interesting person I ever met. Don’t you think?” she asked me.
I smiled at James, who looked pained. “Of course,” I said.
Somebody knocked at the door. “More visitors!” said Patty Flood, as if she’d moved in as hostess. But it was only Oscar.
“Dinner’s ready, Jim,” he said.
Patty Flood didn’t budge. “Hey, Oscar,” she said. “Remember me?”
“I remember you, Patty,” he said. “It’s only been since yesterday.”
“Well,” said Patty. “You guys are eating dinner, huh?”
“Yes,” said Oscar. Still it took Patty a while to will herself to her feet, gather her purse, and walk out the door.
“Montana?” Oscar said, after Patty Flood finally left. “Nobody lives in Montana.”
Oscar was a good New Englander, of course: once upon a time we were all of the country, and suddenly two hundred years later there’s this coarse swollen thing stuck to our back calling itself the United States.
“Delaware who?” Oscar would ask, confronted by history.
If you grow up around here you start to believe that somehow all American history previous to 1776 occurred in Massachusetts. If someone had asked me, at age eight, to name the thirteen colonies, I would have started, “Boston, Plymouth, Salem, Lexington, Concord …”
“That woman’s here every day,” Oscar said to me. “I don’t know how Jim can stand her.”
“She’s lonely,” said James.
“She’s got her husband. Tell her to bother him.”
“Oh, Don,” James said, disgusted. “He just makes her lonelier.”
“Some people are like that,” I said, knowing that was true but unsure of whether I was one of them.
“Most people are,” said James.
I ran into Patty Flood the next afternoon when I was outside on my park bench, eating some tragic sandwich I’d assembled from odds and ends out of my fridge—sliced apple, some cheese, pickle relish. Single people eat sadly—they cobble together things left from shopping trips based on dreams of all the meals they’d fix for themselves, all the ways they’d treat themselves to something grand; those dreams, for me, died by the next day and, despite my best hopes, I wanted only canned hash and apples. Dogged by practicality, I had to use everything I’d bought anyhow.
“Hey!” said Patty Flood. She sat down next to me. Her dress was white, with yellow and red polka dots. She looked like a well-dressed clown.
I nodded at her and bit into my sandwich.
“I was just going to go see Jim,” she said. “You wanna come with?”
“I have to go back to work.”
“Right.” She laughed. “When I’m on vacation I think the whole world is.” She hooked her elbows over the back of the bench. “I was gonna bring something to Jim, to cheer him up. What would?”
“What makes you think he needs cheering up?”
She looked surprised. “Boy, you aren’t paying attention. He’s a real nice, real sad guy. I never met anyone who needs more cheering up. If I could, I’d take him to an amusement park or something. But if Mohammed can’t come to the mount
ain—”
“James isn’t the amusement park kind,” I said. I regarded my sandwich; it looked like an ottoman with the stuffing leaking out. “I do pay attention.”
Patty Flood nudged my calf with the toe of her shoe. “Maybe you need to go to an amusement park. There’s one out Nantasket, I hear. Nothing wrong with you a good roller coaster wouldn’t fix.”
I resisted the urge to kick her back. Library patrons walked up the path, past the bench; some of them smiled, some didn’t seem to recognize me without the circulation desk around my waist.
“There’s nothing wrong with me at all,” I said to Patty Flood. “Roller coaster or no roller coaster.”
“Listen.” Her voice got soft and personal. “I know you. I know you better than you think I do—”
“What’s my name?” I stared at her, sure she did not remember. I wanted to quite literally strike her quite literally dumb.
But Patty Flood laughed. “Oh, ma’am,” she said, “that’s one detail I don’t know. But I know you’re someone who thinks she’s smart just ’cause she’s miserable. And I know you think I’m a fool. I used to be like you: smart and sad. Then I found Jesus Christ, and I’m dumb and happy.”
“Ah, well,” I said. My sandwich was falling apart in my hands; I tried to put it in some kind of order. “Jesus Christ. That would explain things.”
“Yeah.” Patty smiled. “He explains everything. Back when I was like you, back when I was so intelligent, I thought that was my job, to explain everything. And you know what? That’s God’s job. Without God, there’s no explanation, not for the smallest, most meaningless puzzle. No wonder I was desperate: I was looking for nothing! My husband’s like you. A lotta people are, billions. Y’all think you feel deeply just because you feel miserable. But here’s the thing: happiness is deep, and so is faith. There’s a lot of perfectly good emotions besides despair.”
She stood up and visored her eyes with her hand. “Pretty town, that’s for sure. Maybe I’ll see you later. Remember Jesus loves you.” She made it sound like a threat. And then she started down the street without another word.
I wanted to chase her, to say something, to push her over. But I sat on my bench instead. The polka-dot dress, the ludicrous red patent-leather belt that made her look like—well, she looked like a doll I’d owned as a girl: a blond pretty girl on top, and when you turned her over and flipped her full skirt inside out, another doll, her twin, except dark, beneath her. I felt like that upside-down girl, blood cupped in the bottom of my skull, in the dark, no hope for daylight as long as Patty Flood went shining down the main street of Brewsterville. Nobody could see me.
But in that dark I had myself. My old reliable, unlovable self—despite Patty’s reminder of Jesus’s personal affection for me, I suspected even He favored sunnier dispositions than mine. Jesus might respect me, Jesus might think I was a stand-up gal and value me as a friend, but He surely did not love me. Well, who needed Him.
Isn’t it funny how the faithful only reaffirm our faithlessness in everything except ourselves?
You were never smart, I thought at Patty Flood, and then I went back inside the library.
Patty Flood was at the cottage when I showed up that afternoon. James was painting at his easel, and she was painting her toenails. She balanced her heel on the edge of my chair and dabbed at her big toe with the tiny red brush. James held his own brush still a second, fascinated.
“I’ve never seen this before,” he said.
Patty leaned as close to her foot as she could and blew at the polish. “It’s easy, once you get the hang of it,” she said, as if James were watching her debone a fish or tap-dance or turn water into wine. She extended her leg to admire her work. “Not bad,” she said to her foot, and then, to me, “Today was a busy day. We had, what, five visitors?”
“Six,” said James.
“Six!” said Patty Flood. “Somebody brought taffy. Want a piece?”
“No thank you.”
Patty reached over to a box on a high table and grabbed a wax-paper bow tie. “It’s good. You sure?”
“Quite sure,” I said. “Your husband’s at the beach again?”
“Nah. He drove up to Plymouth to see that rock.”
“That rock?” I said.
“Yeah. But the guy at the hotel. He said it wasn’t any big deal, just a rock with a date carved into it. I mean, rocks. Out west, we have plenty of those.” She sighed. “That’s one thing we aren’t short on.”
“When are you going back?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said mournfully. “I’ll miss this place. I’ll miss this one.” She pointed at James. He looked embarrassed. “Won’t you miss me, Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
She smirked at him, then slapped at his knee. “Sometimes I forget you’re a teenage boy, and then you act like one. All mumbly.” She looked at her watch. “Well. Don should be getting back. We’re going out to some restaurant tonight, some sea captain’s house. I need to get going.” She blew at her toes again, then tested the polish with her finger. “Close enough.” She slipped her foot into her shoe and stood up, gathered her things, walked to James in his chair. Even sitting down he was taller than she was. “Let’s see whether you’ve captured me,” she said. But the canvas wasn’t her, just a study of her empty shoe careless on the ground. “Not bad. Well,” she said to him. “This was the nicest vacation I’ve had in a long time. Will you write back if I write first?”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t look at her, and I realized, astounded, that he was going to miss her, that he didn’t want her to go.
“Good-bye,” she said, and then quick she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. She walked as fast to the door as she could without running, and turned. “Well,” she said, and her eyes were damp. “Better go hear about that stupid rock. See you.” And then she was out the door.
“There goes Patty,” I said.
“Oh, she was okay,” he said, though I’d said nothing aloud to the contrary. “She’s had a hard life. I can forgive a lot of”—he waved his hand—“personality problems if someone’s had a hard life. She was a good talker. I get tired of the same questions all day. How are you, how tall are you, how much do you weigh? That kind of company just wears me out. Nice to have someone new around who lasts for a while.”
But even Patty Flood had lasted for only two weeks.
“Start the record player, will you?” James asked. I flipped the switch and set the bulky tone arm to the edge of the record that was already there. I hadn’t looked at the label. The record popped, and then some fiddles whined. It wasn’t the teenagers’ music—not Stella music, as I thought of it. I pointed at the record player. “What is this?”
“Molly O’Day,” James said. “And the Cumberland Mountain Folks.”
“Jesus music.”
“Music about Jesus,” he said. “Yes. Patty Flood—she gave it to me.”
James put down his brush and turned to Molly O’Day’s voice, singing now about God gathering His jewels. She meant dead people. He stared at the record player as if it were evidence of God, Molly O’Day a visitation from a particular, southern rank of angels.
“I like it,” I said. I was trying to be generous.
“Yeah,” said James. “Patty wants me to get religion, I guess. She wants me to get a lot of religion. Molly O’Day makes it sound like a good idea.”
“Really?” I said. The music made me feel uncomfortable and accused, the way Patty had. If feeling stupid was being faithful, maybe I was on my way.
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not convinced yet.”
“I met Patty downtown today. She told me my problem was I thought too much and it made me miserable. She promised me if I accepted Jesus, I’d be dumb and happy in no time.”
“Don’t do it,” said James. “But she’s right.”
“She is?”
“Sure. You’d have to be a moron to think this wasn’t a sad old world.”
“Sad
old world? You’re starting to sound like one of these singers.”
“Yeah. Well, why not. I don’t listen to the radio anymore. This is my new favorite music, gospel. She gave me some Bill Monroe, too. The radio, it’s all … Dean Martin or Kay Starr or Elvis Presley, you know?”
“No,” I said. “What?”
“They’re all singing about love,” said James. He picked up a brush and started stirring it madly in a glass of water. “I mean, either they’re over it, or they’re starting it, or they’re just talking about having a good time—and it’s just this. It’s this: I don’t want to hear music about things I can’t have anymore. I hate to even be reminded.”
Molly O’Day’s heart was breaking, too; you could hear it in her voice.
“You can have it,” I said quietly.
“Please, Peggy,” he said. He kept his voice careful, rational. “I understand my life.”
“I’m not sure you do,” I said.
“I understand some things.” He started capping his tubes of paint.
I walked to the record player. “This music doesn’t bother you?”
“This?” he said. “This is something I can have, if I want. That’s the whole point of it. If I just welcome Jesus into my heart … This music?” He closed his eyes and moved his hand as if he wanted to catch one of the fiddle licks. “It doesn’t remind me of anyone.”
“No,” I said.
“It reminds me of everyone. Right now, I miss every person I ever knew.” He opened his eyes again. “That’s okay. That much I can bear. It’s just when you get down to particulars.” He hit his chest with his fist, a brush sticking up from between his fingers like a cigarette. “That’s when.”
“When what?” I said, but I thought, Stella. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe he’d been a little in love with Patty Flood and couldn’t figure out whether her wanting to save his soul was personal or not. If he’d asked me, I would have said, it’s always personal.
He shook his head, smiling sadly. He was like me. He had no vocabulary to even talk about these things.
He bit his lip and said, “I have to protect my heart, Peggy.”
Once upon a time he’d listened to love songs, even if now he’d sworn them off. I’d heard his radio, seen his records, though now I couldn’t find any evidence of that teenage music in the cottage. Only those Jesus singers sung there now, loving God and thinking not too much of man- and womankind. He’d gotten rid of Pat Boone and Dean Martin and the Platters and one particularly deplorable but lovely Elvis Presley record, a gift from Stella. I was worried that it would take a turn, that he’d reverse his early decision and start to believe in God, become religious, think that faith could fill his empty hours. Probably it could. But he didn’t, and in fact the reason he liked the Jesus singers was because they were broken up over an emotion that wasn’t familiar to him and took no energy to receive.
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